


Knives Set Aside

by Isis



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Getting Together, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-20 17:23:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17626460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: Arya had not asked permission to take up her old name and her old sword, with the new things she had learned. She had wondered if they would come after her.





	Knives Set Aside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fairleigh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/gifts).



> Thanks to Hamsterwoman for beta-reading. This is book canon, but I have assumed that some elements of TV canon will happen in the books as well (if they ever get written...) in future installments.

The long, hard years of winter were finally giving way to springtime. Farther south it was probably already full spring, Arya thought, as she walked through the godswood, but here there were only the beginnings of fresh buds on the bare-limbed trees. The fields of the riverlands were doubtless thick with sprouted grain by now, and the orchards and vineyards of the Reach in flower; but here at Winterfell snow still lay in the shadows cast by the rebuilt walls, though the first tentative green shoots had poked their heads above the earth weeks earlier. 

So it was with all of Westeros. The invading hordes from beyond the Wall had been beaten back, and the usurper queen, the last name on Arya's old list, executed for her treasonous crimes. Now King’s Landing rejoiced under the new rulers of the Seven Kingdoms: her _brother_ , who it had turned out was actually her cousin, and the white-haired Targaryen woman who commanded dragons. But changes were slower to take root in the north. The Starks – those who were left – still thought of His Grace as their brother, Jon Snow.

She entered the main courtyard and headed for the keep. The bell had been rung for the midday meal, and around her the workers who had been hired to help with the rebuilding streamed in. The townspeople were busy with their own cottages and planting, and so a sort of corps of laborers had sprung up, working to restore the Seven Kingdoms after the War of the Five Kings and the long winter that had brought its own strange battles. They moved north with the spring, cutting timber and mortaring walls. At each place some men stayed behind, either for permanent employment or a woman’s charms; others joined the caravan to take their places. And so village by village, keep by keep, Westeros was being rebuilt.

The workers took their seats at the long table that had been set for them at the bottom of the hall, and Arya took her place beside Sansa. A bowl was set before her, and she frowned at it. “Stone stew again, I see.” 

“It’s venison,” said Sansa. 

“A deer might have wandered by the kitchen while they were cooking, that’s as much meat as is in it. I should go hunting.”

“Brienne and Podrick went hunting. There _is_ venison in it.”

“Maybe in _your_ bowl,” said Arya. She was joking, mostly, and they both knew it. The kitchen staff took pains to ensure that a little meat made it into everybody’s serving, along with the wrinkled vegetables from the bottom of the store-houses and whatever could be found in the woods. It would be weeks until they could harvest the first of the early greens.

“I wish you could have been with me in Braavos,” she said, impulsively. “We ate oysters and cockles, fish you’ve never heard of. All sorts of unusual spices from the world over. A few peppers, and even this stone stew would be delicious.”

“I see,” said Sansa. And then: “You don’t want to stay, do you.”

“Winterfell is my home.” The words came automatically to her lips, without thought. They were true words, but they were not the whole truth. She took a mouthful of stew, feeling her sister’s eyes on her. How had Sansa known what was in her heart? “But I have seen something of the world,” Arya said finally. “And I should like to see more of it.”

And just like that, it was out, as though she had laid the words on the table in front of them. As though they were things with heft and shape, still lingering after they had left her mouth. She looked over at Sansa. “You’re the Queen in the North. You don’t need me here.”

“You’ll always have a place here,” said Sansa. Which, Arya noted, wasn’t a denial. But Sansa had her steward and her guard and all the people of Winterfell. She had Bran to advise her, and Brienne of Tarth to defend her. Arya had been her knife in the dark; now the dark days of winter had given way to a sunlit spring, and the knife could be set aside, for a time.

“I know,” said Arya, placing her hand over her sister’s. “This will always be my home.” Then she looked up. One of the laborers stood awkwardly by the high table, waiting for his chance to speak. She had noticed another presence, a movement at the corner of her eye, but hadn’t paid attention. She’d become sloppy, living here in her childhood home. She’d been on her guard for years, through her exile and the battles that followed. Once they had disposed of the Boltons and the scheming Littlefinger, and Sansa truly ruled in Winterfell, Arya had let herself relax. Maybe that had been a mistake.

Sansa followed her eyes. “Yes, what is it?”

The laborer dipped his head. He was young, tall and slender, sandy-haired and gap-toothed. “Begging your pardon, Lady Stark, but Master Amory wants to know, would you be wanting the animal pens fixed, or the garden beds done next?”

“The pens need to be done first, or the pigs will get out and eat the garden,” said Sansa. “I told him that this morning.”

“Yes, Lady, sorry, Lady.” He nodded to her and to Arya, then backed away and returned to the workers’ table.

“Honestly, where are these men from, that they don’t know about keeping livestock?” Sansa muttered. She took a spoonful of her own stew and made a face. “I can’t wait until things get back to normal.”

“It may be a long time,” said Arya. She was still watching the laborer who’d spoken to them. He bent to say something to Master Amory, the overseer of the traveling gang, and then headed out of the hall. What had he overheard? To whom would he give that information? “I need to check on something,” she said, putting down her spoon and bowl and rising from her seat.

She slipped from the hall cautiously, looking both ways. She sniffed the air and studied the dust on the ground. The man had gone around the corner, toward the smithy. Her footsteps were silent as she followed.

He was waiting for her as she rounded the corner, leaning against the wall, the hint of a smile on his lips. “Arya Stark. I was not wrong, thinking that you would come.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?” 

“You need to ask?”

Arya nodded, and exhaled. She had not needed to ask, but in asking, she had confirmed her suspicions. She had not asked permission to take up her old name and her old sword, with the new things she had learned. She had wondered if they would come after her. “You are no one.”

“Just so.”

She felt for her center and subtly shifted into a crouch, her weight on the balls of her feet. “Have you come to kill me?” 

He laughed lightly. “Of course not. I know you, Arya Stark. It is not our way to bring death to those known to us, or have you forgotten?”

It was someone who knew her, which meant that under this open, freckled face, it was someone she knew. That narrowed it down. 

Her mouth tightened. “I will defend my sister. I will defend any of her people – _our_ people.”

“I am not here to kill her, nor to kill anyone else.” 

“Then why are you here?”

“I am here because after I fulfilled my obligations to those who paid for my services, I found myself wanting to explore a bit more of Westeros. There was a war, and there was winter, and there were ways to make myself useful. And there was a girl I wanted to see again. A girl who gave me names, and took my coin. A girl, who over the past few years has become a woman.” He smiled. “Why, I am here for you, Arya Stark.” Lifting a hand, he passed it across his face.

She had expected to see the fine features that had been engraved in her memory, the hair that was white on one side and red on the other. But she recognized the black curls and the hooked nose, the scar on the cheek, even though she’d only seen them for a few short moments before he’d left Harrenhal. When she’d met him, he’d spoken with the self-effacing speech patterns they used in Lorath, matching his claimed Lorathi origin. But here he spoke the common tongue in the ordinary way of Westeros. It was now clear that the face he’d shown her then had been as false as the one he’d been wearing to pass as a laborer. Perhaps this, then, was his real face. 

“I know you,” she said slowly. “But Jaqen H’ghar is dead.”

“He is dead,” the man agreed.

“Who are you, then?”

“I am no one.” He held up a hand, forestalling the words she was about to speak. “But Arya Stark was no one. And then she became Arya Stark again.” Slowly he dropped his hand toward her, and she let him take her hand in his. His skin was cool and dry, but she could feel the beat of his pulse in his palm, at the base of his thumb. “I have tired of being a knife in someone else’s hand. I should like to become myself again, as well.”

 _A knife in the dark_ , thought Arya. “Who is stopping you?”

“No one,” he said, and grinned. His smile was no longer gap-toothed, and one of his teeth shone gold. It was, thought Arya, a nice smile. Not that a nice smile meant anything; she knew better, now. He lifted her hand and brought it to his lips, kissed it gently. “You said you wished to see the world. I would travel with you.”

She had imagined just that, long ago. When he had stripped off that first face, the first time, and offered to take her across the narrow sea. Serving Lord Bolton and following the Hound north, she’d wondered how her life would have been different, if only she’d gone with him. While she served her apprenticeship at the House of Black and White, she had dreamed of meeting him again, imagined his delight at seeing her in the place he’d sent her. When her breasts grew and her flowering came, her dreams took on different form. But he was the one, always, she thought about.

She had wondered if any of the men she’d met in Braavos were, under their faces, really Jaqen. For that was who he always was in her heart, despite his last words to her, just as in her dreams he always had hair red on one side and white on the other.

“It’s been a long time since we traveled together,” she finally said.

“Yes. Your face now suits you, Arya Stark. I would like to get to know the woman you have become.”

“And you? Who are you, then?”

His smile vanished. “I don’t know. I have been no one for too long, I think.” Dropping her hand, he leaned against the wall. “When we first met, you were a child – no, do not argue, you were. I was no older than you, when I came to the House of Black and White. Perhaps younger. And I stayed with them for far longer.”

“You’re not _that_ much older than I am.” 

“Not now. You were a girl and I was a man, but now you are a woman and I am still a man. The difference becomes smaller. And when a man is truly no one, it becomes unimportant, who he once was. Unimportant things are easy to forget.” 

“Is there no one who remembers who you were? I mean, who you were before?” She had Jon, and Sansa, and Bran. Each of them had changed in different ways over the past years, just as she had changed. Odd, she thought, how those changes had altered her relationships with her sister and brothers. She’d disliked Sansa and had never thought much about Bran, but now they both understood her far better than they ever had before, and she liked the people they’d both become. And yet Jon, her favorite brother, had become more distant, both by the revelation of his blood and the responsibilities of his new position. “Or maybe,” she added, thoughtful, “you could just become someone new. The person you truly want to be under your own face.”

“As you have.”

It was true. She was Arya Stark again, but she had also become someone new. Someone who was no longer the envious girl watching her brothers learn to fight in the Winterfell courtyard, nor the urchin pretending to be a boy as she escaped King’s Landing, nor the acolyte wearing someone else’s face in Braavos. This Arya Stark had drawn from all of her previous lives to become who she was now.

“Who would you be, then?”

He shrugged. “Will you help me figure that out?”

Arya studied him. He neither looked nor sounded like the man who had been in her dreams. But he was still the man she had saved, who had saved her in return, so many years ago. And, she realized, she wanted very much to help him discover who he would become.

“Go help repair the animal pens. I will make preparations for our journey.” She extended her hand, and he took it. “We can set out tomorrow morning.”

“And where shall we go?”

She grinned. “I guess we’ll figure that out, too.”


End file.
